Being able to do her own washing and having responsibility for her personal possessions symbolised the freedom Michelle Stevens* wanted but was denied in institutional care. Stevens features in my latest Guardian article (screenshot above). Her severe mental health problems meant she was in and out of residential care and mental health wards for a decade. She recalls staff shouting at her and living circumstances that were “very closed up and not nice at all”.

Today, however, Stevens says she is “much happier and freer”. She has a bedroom in a large double-fronted Victorian house – and she loves the garden at her supported living home in West Norwood, south London, which is run by social care provider Certitude. “[It] is cleaner than other places I have been, and has nicer facilities,” says Stevens.

She enjoys socialising – with the 11 other residents and locally – and for the first time in three years, she does her own washing and is trusted with her belongings.

The women-only housing is designed for those with enduring and complex mental health issues who may be stuck in restrictive environments. Certitude provides support while First Priority, a housing association, manages the tenancy agreements. The home opened in September 2016 and residents, who are mostly in their 30s and 40s, benefit from individualised support that is rarely offered in residential or inpatient care.

I’m really grateful to all the women who shared their experiences for the story and talked about the “good road ahead”, as Michelle put it, which now seems to be ahead of them. Read the rest of the article here.

This was the question debated by a group of young women in diverse roles in the construction industry for an article I’ve just done for Construction Manager magazine.

According the Office of National Statistics, women account for just 12.8% of the workforce. Then there is the gender pay gap – the construction and building trades’ supervisors have the highest in the sector, with men paid 45.4% more than women. Little wonder then that the number of women in construction has dropped by 17% in the last 10 years, compared to a 6.5% drop for all workers in the industry.

You can read the full piece to see why it makes economic as well as ethical sense to increase the numbers of women in the industry. Among the topics debated were the fact that more action is needed to break the stereotype that construction is a man’s industry.

The roundtable heard that issues such as a lack of female toilets or sanitary bins are common. As one participant said, if a woman working on site has to leave the project several times a day to find a public lavatory, there is a strong productivity case – as well as a human rights case – for installing facilities.

Thanks to all who took part in what was a fascinating and determined debate – and all power to these strong young women and their efforts to shake up a male-dominated sector.

Beverley Lewis House is the only refuge in the UK that caters for women who have learning disabilities. Photograph: Beverley Lewis House

Barbara Davis’s abusive boyfriend burned her fingers on the stove when he discovered her packed suitcase under the bed and realised she was trying to leave. He had controlled Davis, 36, who has a mild learning disability, for years. He isolated her from family and friends, verbally abusing her parents until they stopped visiting. He locked her in the privately rented London flat they shared, goading her to kill herself. She recalls: “He told me to strangle myself with a wire … he wanted me to die.”

Davis (who eventually escaped) told her story to researchers from the Tizard Centre as part of a project to explores the experiences women with learning disabilities who suffer domestic violence. The work, which also looks at the attitudes and practices of professionals who support such women, is featured in my Guardian piece.

There are some shocking – although perhaps not surprising (given the low profile of learning disability as an issue) – facts included in the piece. Among them, that the UK has just one specialist domestic violence refuge for women with learning disabilities. What’s more, most police officers (often the first point of contact in a domestic abuse incident) do not believe that a learning disability makes women more vulnerable to domestic violence.

The web is full of information about domestic violence, but searching for local, reliable and relevant services often means trawling through and weeding out old information and advert-laden sites.

The recently launched American resource Domestic Shelters seeks to put that right. “Aggregating an ocean of information into a single place” is how project leaders refer to the scheme.

The newly launched project, a partnership between the American National Coalition Against Domestic Violence and charity Theresa’s Fund, says it is the first and largest fully searchable directory of domestic violence projects in the US, and includes around 3,000 places for women to find help quickly and easily.

Users enter their location, language and service preferences (emergency shelter, for example, or advice), and at a click, can find the nearest, most appropriate support. Recognising the fact that people increasingly use phones and tablets to conduct searches website is optimised for such devices.

One in four women (and one in six men) in the UK will be a victim of domestic violence during their lifetime, according to research. Two women a week are killed by a current or former male partner.

This is what one domestic violence campaigner and writer, Sarafina Bianco, has said about the project: “If this site had been around while I was searching for help, I probably could have started my healing journey much sooner.”

She adds: “When I was preparing to leave my abuser, I did not know there were non-profits working to support survivors of domestic abuse, so I secretly planned by myself, hoping my logic would surface at a time when I was truly panicking and in a traumatic state. That was five years ago. Even after leaving and finding out there were resources, it took several Google searches to find the local non-profits in my area.

“Still, I couldn’t help but wonder, if it was difficult for me to find them after leaving, how someone still in their abusive relationship could find them without getting caught…Domesticshelters.org streamlines a very important process for any person, at any point in their recovery, to find the nearest service providers who will help them begin thriving in society once more.”

A woman who complained 16 years ago of being abused by charity personnel in the 1970s now wants an inquiry:

The Salvation Army failed to investigate allegations of historical child abuse, according to a woman who told the charity 16 years ago that four of its members had sexually assaulted her in the 1970s.

In 1998, Lucy Taylor (not her real name) told the Salvation Army that four men at her local branch of the charity in the north of England had abused her. Her story suggests she was groomed from the age of 10, assaulted from 12 years old and the abuse continued for eight years until she left the organisation.

Taylor says her complaints were not handled seriously either at the local branch, known as a “citadel”, which was at the centre of her allegations, or at the national headquarters in London. When she later approached police, an investigation resulted in two of the four men being arrested on suspicion of indecent assault. They were later released without charge. For legal reasons the Guardian cannot name the alleged victim, now in her 50s, or the men.

Taylor says: “I want somebody to take me seriously – listen to my problem and help me sort this out”. She adds of her alleged abusers: “I just want them to realise what they’ve done to me [but] part of me doesn’t, part of me doesn’t want them to know how it’s upset me and ruined my life.” Read the rest of my interview and report on the Guardian website.

Women in Croxteth, Liverpool, discuss the impact of cuts on communities, part of the research for the new book, Austerity Bites

Do you know what austerity really means?

Here’s a definition from the Collins Dictionary, as quoted in Mary O’Hara’s commanding new book on the subject, Austerity Bites: “…difficult economic conditions created by government measures to reduce the budget deficit, especially by reducing public expenditure: a period of austerity/austerity measures.”

But that literal definition, and the words of politicians using the rhetoric of austerity to mask the harsh impact of public spending cuts, conveys nothing of the human cost of the unprecedented reform of the welfare state.

Austerity Bites redresses that imbalance. I don’t usually do reviews on this site, but this timely book demands attention.

Reading this book means you join the award-winning journalist O’Hara in her “journey to the sharp end of cuts in the UK”. Based on a 12-month trip around the country meeting diverse people affected by cuts as reforms were introduced in 2012 and 2013, O’Hara gives a platform to untold stories of hardship.

O’Hara’s book suggests, “austerity” has become an acceptable rhetoric, one that glosses over the harsh impact of welfare reform – as in “cuts hurt but in the age of austerity, what else can we do?” The creeping normalisation of food poverty and food banks, as explored in this book, is shameful.

While an intricate explanation is given of the political and economic context, it is the lives of those whose voices are rarely given a platform – the homeless, the disabled, the young among them – that are the focus here.

Crisscrossing the country, the picture is one of political classes living in a “bubble” untouched by the harsh reality of life on the front line of Austerity UK; a massive chasm between the people suffering from the impact of cuts and abolition of vital benefits and the people making the decisions to abolish that support.

People talk of “breaking point”, “existing not living”, their “desperate situation”; the book does much to explode the myth of benefit Britain. A fairly comprehensive catalogue of unfairness is chronicled in Austerity Bites – the disabled, for example, are shown to be bearing the brunt of cuts, the vulnerable are made more vulnerable and the poorer become poorer.

As one man, Dec, who O’Hara meets on a Luton estate tells the author: “Do I deserve better? Do other people deserve better? I think they do.”

Unsettling, but vital, reading, this book lays bare the real, true story of austerity.

A charity-led project recently launched in Hertfordshire, hoping to change preconceptions about fashion and disability and encourage young adults with physical and/or learning disabilities to be more confident with their style.

Stevenage teenager Jazz Nightingale took part in the first fashion styling session recently. Jazz, who tried a session at Oaklands College in St Albans. The 19-year-old says “I was interested in the session because I like to follow fashion just like other young people. It helps me express myself and my favourites are patterns, sparkly clothes and scarves….The session with Hannah helped me think about what sort of styles are on trend at the moment and what would suit me. Learning how you could alter your clothes to suit your own needs was great too. It really helped boost my self-confidence.”

Natalie Birch, also 19, has a learning disability and while she admits she is “happiest in hoodies, t-shirts, trainers and joggers”, she says the styling session gave her fresh ideas about style. She ends, “The fashion industry could do more to support disabled people by using more disabled models in magazines.”

The project was funded by London bar Embargo 59 with proceeds from a fundraising cocktail evening during London Fashion Week in February.

* Read more about the sessions here or contact info@flamingofoundation.org to run a session for a group of young adults

Hyper-real images that question cultural attitudes towards women and childbirth form part of a new exhibition opening today.

The show at the GV Art gallery by Helen Knowles, Private View: Public Birth, features both figurative and abstract images of women “in the transcendental state of birth”; Knowles founded the Birth Rites Collection in 2008, the first collection of contemporary art dedicated to the subject.

Knowles has used screen grabs from YouTube videos to show women at the crowning stage of birth, when the baby’s head beings to emerge. By using footage from social media platforms – films usually reserved for private viewing – Knowles hopes to question the discomfort some audiences have with certain images.

The Birthing of Azheyo Aeoro (Image courtesy of artist and GV Art)

The concept is a refreshing and thought-provoking one. Most public perceptions of new mothers involve images of immaculately groomed famous women whose bodies magically snap back into place and while “beautiful” is a word often used to describe babies, it’s rarely associated with birth itself (and certainly not linked to images of the birth process).

Yet the pieces of work on display in today’s exhibition are intriguing and often ethereal, reflecting notions of female strength.

Late night on the estate, London. Two hooded and capped teen boys hang out, waiting for a couple of teen girls. Nervously the girls approach. Tiana used to go out with Stigz, but she’s not sure about this new guy he’s brought along. She thought they were going out to a party, but the boys lead them to this new guy’s place. His parents are out. Tiana fights her instincts to run. The door shuts. The boys start to grab them. The girls resist but they won’t stop. Everything happens so fast…

Thankfully these events are just part of an awareness-raising film for Oii My Size, a youth-led project targeting teens. The Oii My Size project. For those not down with the kids, “my size” means “my kind of girl”. The project is based on a colourful website full of videos and pictures to help teens understand what makes relations between teen boys and girls appropriate and respectful.

The scenario described above is, however, based on a true story and reflects the reality of life for many teen girls. From serious assault like this, to sharing naked pictures of them (sexting) and being spoken to disrespectfully, life can be a minefield for girls when it comes to teen boys. A recent study by the NSPCC reported up to 40 per cent of young people had been involved in sexting, mainly under pressure from other schoolchildren while a conference in Manchester run by the area’s Safeguarding Children Board heard reports from schools that sexting had become a “daily problem” affecting girls as young as 11 years old.

No one knows this better than the group of 12 teen girls who have shaped Oii My Size.

The girls, aged 16, from Pimlico, London, met to socialise until becoming involved in a Peabody Staying Safe campaign. The girls had previously worked with youth arts company Dream Arts to produce a warning video about staying safe around boys and jumped at the chance to spread the message about safe relationships and the dangers of sexting (sending indecent images to an under-18 is illegal). The video, which starred the girls themselves, is now on the Oii My Size site.

All of the girls had some kind of personal experience with the topic – whether affected directly, like the events in the video, or having friends who had to move schools due to sexting, or being exposed to abuse such as a Blackberry Messenger “slags list” – where girls are publicly named and shamed.

The girls were supported by Peabody, Dream Arts and youth-led media social enterprise Mediorite, which I volunteer with. Peabody worked with the girls under its Staying Safe campaign, Dream Arts supported them to work together and provided them with a specialist support worker for two hours each week after school.

As well as tackling issues such as sexting , Oii My Size focuses on disrespectful chat-up lines (or “churpz”) and when to say no in teen relationships. The magazine-style website also has light-hearted videos of teen boys trying out their best (read:worst) churpz on the unimpressed girls, like “Do you work at Subway? Cos you got me on a foot-long” and invites users to “rate my churpz”. This cleverly avoids preaching by demonstrating that the disrespectful churpz just make girls feel embarrassed, intimidated and degraded. In other words –boys- they do not work.

The website also contains a video of Althia Legal-Miller, a doctoral research student at King’s College, London, and an expert in female adolescence and violence. She explains the dangers of sexting, promoting the key message of “trust your instincts” to teenage girls in relationships.

The girls behind the project say they “have chosen this topic as we have realized that we feel intimidated and disrespected due to our gender.” Team member Shanice George explains that “hopefully the website will educate young girls and boys that sexting is illegal, cos we didn’t even know it was illegal until we started the project, and if we didn’t know how were other people to know? Also we wanted to educate boys on how they talk to girls… and we are now working with a domestic violence woman from Peabody and we would like to make girls aware about domestic violence too.”

Lucy Ferguson from Mediorite adds that the girls felt the topic “was a real, urgent issue that just wasn’t being tackled at school, and that no one was tackling it…The project was a success because the girls really challenged themselves to think about the audience.”

The girls not only gained new skills from the project but also won a Silver Arts Award, an Open College Network accreditation in project management via Peabody and a Nominet internet safety award. The website got 2000 hits in 24 hours the day after they won the award, and has been promoted at school assemblies by the girls to over 3000 people.

The project’s audience will undoubtedly grow, as Lucy Ferguson explains: “Most youth groups don’t really explore what someone who doesn’t know them is going to think of their project, they don’t think about how to sell and engage the audience, but these girls really got that. So ‘rate my churpz’ – as a traffic-driver is a really sophisticated idea. It shows they understood the need to engage boys too, and draw people in with a sense of humour, and then engage them with the harder content. Most youth groups are completely unforgiving to the audience. This was a much more sophisticated approach.”

How old does a woman have to be to be categorized as “older”? 50? 70? And if we push females deemed to be “older women”, in “late adulthood” or in “advanced years” into the same group, what common concerns do they share, if any? More importantly, does anyone outside of that demographic notice or care about ageing women? And if they do – what’s being done about the issues they’re concerned about?

While Britain as an ageing society is a constant source of political and public debate, the specific issue of women and ageing isn’t afforded the focus it should, given that women tend to live longer than men. The 2011 census suggests there are about 11 million women over the age of 50 years, about 4 million of which are over 70 years. By 2035 there will be 4 million more females aged 65+ than under 16s.

Like most people, my personal experience – and I speak from the start of my fourth decade – is that the older you get, the younger so-called “older people” seem. As you age, your perceptions of old and young clearly shift. I don’t, for example, class my friends in their 50s as “old” and my own 81-year-old mother-in-law defies stereotypes and expected patterns of behaviour with her far flung travels to South America and her energetic role as a breeder of rare sheep.

The youth/age picture becomes confused still when you think that childhood apparently ends at 12, younger girls are presented (and sometimes present themselves) as much older while older women – think Madonna, Helen Mirren – are variously praised or mocked. And more often than not, the kind of articles I’m thinking of include a particular kind of faux-praise for a woman’s age-defying antics and appearances…you know what I mean – the pieces that comment on a woman’s “confidence” (ie delusion) in “flaunting” (as in “she’s too old to dress/act like that”) her “mature” (read: “wrinkly, untoned”) figure.

A provocative series of essays published today, coinciding with International Women’s Day, highlights policy issues about ageing women, underlining how the contribution to and role of older women in society is overlooked.

The think tank the International Centre for Longevity (ILC-UK) publication Has the sisterhood forgotten older women? contains 38 essays – everything from personal recollections about the role of women in family and society, to thoughts on intimacy and relationships, the invisibility of older women in international development and opinions about the low media profile of older women (see the words of an older female MP on how she is treated by political parties in relation to media work).

The authors include politicians, policy makers, academics and campaigners such as Jane Ashcroft, chief executive of housing and care group Anchor, Sheila Gilmore MP, Michelle Mitchell, chief executive of Age UK, Heléna Herklots from Carers UK and Marina Yannakoudakis MEP.

As well as discussions about how far women in their 50s 60s 70s think of themselves as “old” (answer: they don’t), the collection of writing stresses the dilemma facing older women – while longevity is to be celebrated “there is a risk that women, who often live longer than men, do so at the risk of being caught in the metaphorical mouse trap: alive but with little quality of life”.

The ILC-UK has also today announced it is establishing an Older Women’s Policy and Research Action Alliance to create “a roadmap for future research and policy priorities”. The organisation hopes today’s compedium will spark a new debate on women in an ageing society.

The issue of the challenge for ageing women in care is a particularly strong theme in today’s collection of essays. In the UK, women account for two thirds of community care users over the age of 65, and three quarters of people in residential care.

Baroness Sally Greengross, chief executive of the ILC-UK added: “Women must engage in the debate on social care funding if we are to get a solution which works for all. It is also essential that the caring contributions of older women are not ignored. Future care reform must take account of and not disincentivise the informal care contribution of older women.”

Here are just three edited highlights from among the pieces in today’s publication:

Oh, I didn’t see you there!
Jane Ashcroft, chief executive, Anchor:
“For several years I have been irritated by the propensity of print journalists to tell us the age of any woman in the news, regardless of any relevance to the story, while rarely applying the same approach to men. Why is age a defining characteristic of women?

In 2010, research conducted on behalf of Anchor, the housing and care provider which I lead, analysed one week of TV programmes on the 5 major UK channels (Older Faces Audit, March 2010, Anchor). We found a dramatic under-representation of older people, and especially older women. Across all channels, people over 50 were under–represented. Despite making up 34% of the UK population, representation on the major channels was as low as 12%, with only BBC2 achieving a realistic level of 38%. And amongst TV presenters appearing in the week under review, only 1 in 5 was an older woman.

This supports my view that ageing in men is often seen more positively than in women – many older men are described as wise and experienced, whereas the expression “don’t be such an old woman” is used to convey entirely negative characteristics.

This picture is so different from the reality that I see in my everyday life, that it is tempting to wonder if I live in a parallel universe! Of my 9,000 or so colleagues in Anchor, over 500 are continuing to enjoy their work well past the official “retirement age”.

Behind the scenes, many older women are leading change in communities, organisations and families, contributing their resources and multitude of skills, and leading interesting and rewarding lives. Some older women, like older men, are facing loneliness, loss and poor health. As a society, and for ourselves, don’t we need to recognise every older woman as an individual, and to enable us to do that we need to improve visibility – instead of “oh, I didn’t see you there” can we say “ah, I’ve been looking for you”?

Older women and care: are they invisible to the sisterhood?
Michelle Mitchell, Age UK:
“Despite care having been on the feminist agenda for years, the issue of it in later life has remained shrouded from our viewpoint, as millions struggle in quiet crisis. Yet nowhere are the compound challenges of class, gender and age more evident and nowhere are older women more in need of a voice.”

Older women carers – invisible and ignored?
Heléna Herklots, chief executive, Carers UK:
“Many older women carers grew up during a time when women’s contribution to society was far less recognised than it is today. They now live in a society which too often ignores their contribution as older women carers. We need to challenge this; guard against any prejudices and assumptions we may ourselves have; and work to ensure that older women carers are recognised, respected, and valued – no longer invisible and ignored.”

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Our Senior SEN Lawyer, Lucy Hayes, spoke to BBC Radio 5 Live yesterday about the thousands of children with special educational needs being ‘off-rolled’ from schools. Listen to the full programme, “The Children 'Vanishing' From Schools” here: https://t.co/hCzxgMRwf2 #SEND

This, on the barriers some of us face to participating in society & community, and solutions like 'deep democracy, not tinkering at the edges with yet another consultation or putting more and more information online if it excludes some and doesn’t lead to real power'. Absolutely.